Belgium v. Netherlands 1-3 (first-half 0-0)

The Dutch earned their second win in as many outings with a 3-1 victory against Belgium thanks to the efforts of Mink van der Weerden who scored both goals for his team. The Dutch now lead Group B with six points, while Belgium is still looking for its first point of the Olympic tournament.

Despite dominating the first half, the Netherlands had to settle for a scoreless draw after 35 minutes The early wake-up call came for Belgium when Mink van der Weerden dinged a pentaly corner shot off the post. The play was quickly followed by a point blank chance for Billy Bakker, but Belgium goalkeeper Vincent Vanasch did his part to keep the underdogs in the game and keep things scoreless at the break.

There was little Vanasch could do when the scoring silence was broken seven minutes into the second half when van der Weerden ripped in an unstoppable penalty corner shot off the top cross bar for the 1-0 lead. It was ironic that Belgium fell behind in the second half as they played their best hockey of the game but kept missing the target by inches.

Belgium’s frustration finally came to an end with 11 minutes left in regulation when Jerome Dekeyser scored a textbook penalty corner. But the jubilee was short lived when van der Weerden struck again less than three minutes later. His initial strike on a penalty corner was blocked but landed right back on his stick when he then ensured the second shot found the mark,giving the Dutch the 2-1 advantage. Bob de Voogd put the icing on the cake inthe last minute when he scored the empty net goal with Vanasch pulled for the extra striker.

Belgium tried desperately to net the equalizer, but came up short in their second straight loss of the London Games.

(Eric Bailey)

Mink VAN DER WEERDEN (NED)
On their game:
"That was a heavy piece of work and it didn't go quite the way we wanted, or actually, not at all. However, we have showed a good fighting mentality and I think that is what you need every single game here. Every match is a fight. Still, qualitatively, we are not there yet, there are details that we will have to work on."

On their improvements since the last game:
"This was a completely different game than the India match, the Belgian team is much better structured and plays in a much more European way. You can't really compare our performance here to our performance in the last game."

On his penalty corners:
"I have been good in both games so far, but Roderick (Weusthof) also has a great corner. I would not want to say that I am the new and only penalty corner specialist, but we are probably a good corner duo as we both have the ability to put the right amount of power into it."

Tom BOON (BEL)
On the team performance:
"I think we dominated for large parts of the game, and we had more chances than them. We got punished from our own errors. We had a great performance, but I think we have to forget this match and focus on our next match against Korea."

On the next match:
"We want to finish in the top eight, so we have to win two of the last three games. We're going to analyse them (Korea) and do what we have to do to beat them."